THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 
25 
held in her arms a skeleton hahe. Some were habited in 
walking dresses ; others in all the finery of ball-room costume, 
with gay silks, slippers, silk stockings, and tawdry lace. It 
was a ghastly sight to look under the bonnets, and^, gaze upon 
the sunken ashy features, decked around with artificial flowers; 
to trace in those withered lineaments no lingering line of 
beauty, no flickering ray of the immortal spirit, but a dreary 
history of mortal agony, decay, and corruption. Yet here the 
husband comes to hold communion with the beloved soul that 
once dwelt in that mouldering corpse ; to look upon those 
blanched features, that were once animate with life and affec¬ 
tion ; to kiss the cold lips, and feel no returning warmth. 
And here, too, the father, brother, sister, and wife come to 
gaze upon the dead ; and here the mother comes to weep 
over the withered corpse of her babe. Once a year, as I learnt 
from the old monk, the relatives of the deceased come to pray 
for the salvation of their souls, and deck the bodies with 
flowers. 
Many a night had that old monk spent down in these dark 
vaults, among the dead ; not as a penance for evil-doing, 
though he confessed that he was weak and sinful, but to pray 
for the soul of some brother, who had been his companion in 
years past. It was not gloomy to him, he said; it made him 
hopeful if not happy ; for he felt, when surrounded by these 
mortal remains, that he was nearer to God. There were 
friends here, whom he had loved in youth and manhood ; 
whose hands he had grasped in fellowship, whose eyes had 
beamed kindly upon him when his heart was sad : now grim 
and motionless in the dark recesses around him. He liked to 
gaze upon them, and think of a re-union with the immortal 
spirits that had left them tenantless. 
Surely that old man was sincere. "What more was the 
world to him than to the dead with whom he mingled ? 
What pleasures could life have to one whose capacity for 
earthly happiness had long since been destroyed by continued 
self-denial, by the tearing out from his heart of every unhid- 
den hope, by fasting and penance, and by all the sacrifices of 
light and sunshine that could turn inward the tide of thought ? 
B 
